Snopes has had a busy year

[Father Time]

People have to use their brain and do their own research.
Challenge everything.

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[Coyote]

Snopes has a proven Left-wing bias, which is unfortunate since it would be nice to have a neutral source. In any case, the Republicans don't need to make stuff up about Obama. He is already on his way to being remembered as a President worse than Jimmy Carter, why the need to fabricate anything?

Proven how?

I was wondering when someone was going to ask me about that! I've been noticing this for the past few years. Here's an example:

[ame=http://youtube.com/watch?v=76ibI1D0SSw]YouTube - Does ABC Skew the News in Favor of Obama?[/ame]

And the Snopes version. Notice they say this is 'False', but they don't have all the information.

snopes.com: Martha Raddatz/ABC News Interview

If a Republican were in office, it might appear that SNOPES has a right-wing bias. The point is that SNOPES makes mistakes, and I've noticed plenty of them. I'm not just going to take their word for it like Modbert does. If it's important to me, I will check it out and find out the truth for myself.

Who is this video? How do you know what they say is correct? I'm not sure that this is evidence casting what Snopes said into doubt....what evidence is there that Snopes is wrong that actually challanges specific points?

I agree, Snopes can be wrong, but I don't see a strongly partisan slant. I think that is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Coyote]

I was wondering when someone was going to ask me about that! I've been noticing this for the past few years. Here's an example:


And the Snopes version. Notice they say this is 'False', but they don't have all the information.

snopes.com: Martha Raddatz/ABC News Interview

If a Republican were in office, it might appear that SNOPES has a right-wing bias. The point is that SNOPES makes mistakes, and I've noticed plenty of them. I'm not just going to take their word for it like Modbert does. If it's important to me, I will check it out and find out the truth for myself.

This is what they had to say about that:

"Regardless of the number of military personnel interviewed, whether this segment reveals some deliberate agenda on the part of ABC to misrepresent the political preferences of U.S. military personnel is an argumentative and subjective issue.

On the one hand, one side claims that the ABC report wasn't supposed to be a representative sampling of party preferences; it was supposed to illustrate that American troops are following the presidential campaign closely and evaluating candidates based on their positions on all the issues (not just the war in Iraq), and some are even favoring Democratic candidates who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Hence, the preponderance of interviews showing soldiers who were not (as many might expect) reflexively endorsing the Republican candidate, John McCain.

On the other hand, critics maintain that by showing only one soldier's expressing a preference for the Republican candidate (prefaced by a laconic Martha Raddatz voice-over intoning, "there were some McCain backers ..."), by separating the portion of the report in which soldiers discussed their candidate preferences from the portion in which they discussed what issues (other than the war) were important to them, and by identifying the report with titles such as "Whom Are Our Troops Endorsing?" and "Surprising Political Endorsements by U.S. Troops," ABC News presented the piece as being a survey of American troops' presidential preferences without offering a true representative sampling of those preferences"


Seems pretty even-handed to me.

I applaud you for reading it, but you missed one word: False. They simply did not have enough information to make that call. That's bias. They should have said 'undetermined'.

If they can find NO information supporting the claim, then it is false. That is not "bias". That is their conclusion, and they laid out the points by which they made that conclusion clearly, noting too, that there is a subjective element.

What was false was that Buckman did not right that email, he specifically stated he did not , and Martha Raddatz did not interview that many people (60) as the email claimed.

Clearly those are "false". If there is bias, it is not in Snopes, but in ABC's reporting of the levels of support.

 

[Coyote]

I applaud you for reading it, but you missed one word: False. They simply did not have enough information to make that call. That's bias. They should have said 'undetermined'.

This was the claim:

Claim: An ABC News report omitted interviews conducted with several dozen U.S. soldiers in Iraq who expressed support for Senator John McCain.

Status: False.

....
...
"The e-mail is a tiny bit off in claiming that there was "not one mention of the 54 [soldiers] for McCain" in the finished segment:
The beginning of the aired segment included six brief interviews with soldiers, three of whom expressed a preference for Barack Obama, two for Hillary Clinton, and one for John McCain.

More important, we found no evidence supporting its assertion the Martha Raddatz interviewed 60 different service members during her March 2008 visit to Iraq but made no use of interviews with anyone who expressed support for Senator McCain.



The Major General [Louis C.] Buckman to whom the e-mail is attributed has stated that he did not write it,

and in an e-mailed response about this subject, Martha Raddatz asserted that she hadn't interviewed nearly as many service members about their presidential preferences as claimed: The story that was supposedly told by "Katelyn" is simply not true. First ... she must have a hundred aunts and uncles because whoever is forwarding it usually claims to be a close friend of one of them. I never went on a trip with John McCain ... and I certainly didn't interview 60 soldiers about who they are voting for.

These attacks on me started because of a story that aired after a visit I took in March to Balad air base with Vice President Cheney. I followed him down a rope line and was surprised to see how many of the military personnel (largely Air Force) said they supported Barack Obama. I did not talk to many more than a dozen service members.

I was with the VP and had no time! There were, of course McCain supporters and Clinton supporters, as well ... which I mentioned in the story. But this was not a poll. It was simply surprising that so many came forward to voice support for a candidate who is advocating withdrawal, just moments after cheering for the vice president. So if there is in fact a "Katelyn" she is making this up. Not only that, she could not possibly have heard me in the noisy crowd. If you would like to check my integrity with some high ranking active duty officers please feel free to do so.

And, please, if any of you actually knows retired MG Buckman, please pass on his email address and this email so I can let him know what he has started. I assume he would not want this to continue or have any role in it.

Please feel free to share this email. Thanks so much for understanding how important my bond with the troops is and how important I feel it is to cover the amazing job they do on a daily basis. "

I really don't see how you can claim that ragged, falsely attributed e-mail should be tagged as "undermined." Really.

Ugggghhhhh!!!!! It's still undetermined because they can't know the truth. We've got a "he said/she said" scenario. Even Snopes admits this:

Regardless of the number of military personnel interviewed, whether this segment reveals some deliberate agenda on the part of ABC to mispresent the political preferences of U.S. military personnel is an argumentative and subjective issue.

You can't just say 'False' when you don't know. The people at Snopes should know this.

Are you saying that the fact that the general named denies he ever wrote that email is a "he said, she said" scenario? I don't think so - it's easily proven by producing an originol email from him.

 

[California Girl]

The more skeptical among us might think that a good few of these 'rumors' about Obama actually come from his own side.... in order to discredit the opposition. Alinsky tactic. Just sayin'.

 

[Coyote]

The more skeptical among us might think that a good few of these 'rumors' about Obama actually come from his own side.... in order to discredit the opposition. Alinsky tactic. Just sayin'.

uh huh....that must be where a good few of those Bush rumors came from too....

 

[xsited1]

This was the claim:

Claim: An ABC News report omitted interviews conducted with several dozen U.S. soldiers in Iraq who expressed support for Senator John McCain.

Status: False.

....
...
"The e-mail is a tiny bit off in claiming that there was "not one mention of the 54 [soldiers] for McCain" in the finished segment:
The beginning of the aired segment included six brief interviews with soldiers, three of whom expressed a preference for Barack Obama, two for Hillary Clinton, and one for John McCain.

More important, we found no evidence supporting its assertion the Martha Raddatz interviewed 60 different service members during her March 2008 visit to Iraq but made no use of interviews with anyone who expressed support for Senator McCain.



The Major General [Louis C.] Buckman to whom the e-mail is attributed has stated that he did not write it,

and in an e-mailed response about this subject, Martha Raddatz asserted that she hadn't interviewed nearly as many service members about their presidential preferences as claimed: The story that was supposedly told by "Katelyn" is simply not true. First ... she must have a hundred aunts and uncles because whoever is forwarding it usually claims to be a close friend of one of them. I never went on a trip with John McCain ... and I certainly didn't interview 60 soldiers about who they are voting for.

These attacks on me started because of a story that aired after a visit I took in March to Balad air base with Vice President Cheney. I followed him down a rope line and was surprised to see how many of the military personnel (largely Air Force) said they supported Barack Obama. I did not talk to many more than a dozen service members.

I was with the VP and had no time! There were, of course McCain supporters and Clinton supporters, as well ... which I mentioned in the story. But this was not a poll. It was simply surprising that so many came forward to voice support for a candidate who is advocating withdrawal, just moments after cheering for the vice president. So if there is in fact a "Katelyn" she is making this up. Not only that, she could not possibly have heard me in the noisy crowd. If you would like to check my integrity with some high ranking active duty officers please feel free to do so.

And, please, if any of you actually knows retired MG Buckman, please pass on his email address and this email so I can let him know what he has started. I assume he would not want this to continue or have any role in it.

Please feel free to share this email. Thanks so much for understanding how important my bond with the troops is and how important I feel it is to cover the amazing job they do on a daily basis. "

I really don't see how you can claim that ragged, falsely attributed e-mail should be tagged as "undermined." Really.

Ugggghhhhh!!!!! It's still undetermined because they can't know the truth. We've got a "he said/she said" scenario. Even Snopes admits this:

Regardless of the number of military personnel interviewed, whether this segment reveals some deliberate agenda on the part of ABC to mispresent the political preferences of U.S. military personnel is an argumentative and subjective issue.

You can't just say 'False' when you don't know. The people at Snopes should know this.

Are you saying that the fact that the general named denies he ever wrote that email is a "he said, she said" scenario? I don't think so - it's easily proven by producing an originol email from him.

Of course not. Did you listen to the YouTube video posted? There is not enough evidence to mark this story as 'False'. Snopes originally had it marked as 'Undetermined' but somehow they were able to change it to 'False' without good enough reason to do so.

Again, I'm not saying Snopes is 'bad' or 'unreliable', but sometimes they just don't get all the information yet there are people who treat it as gospel.

 

[Coyote]

Ugggghhhhh!!!!! It's still undetermined because they can't know the truth. We've got a "he said/she said" scenario. Even Snopes admits this:



You can't just say 'False' when you don't know. The people at Snopes should know this.

Are you saying that the fact that the general named denies he ever wrote that email is a "he said, she said" scenario? I don't think so - it's easily proven by producing an originol email from him.

Of course not. Did you listen to the YouTube video posted? There is not enough evidence to mark this story as 'False'. Snopes originally had it marked as 'Undetermined' but somehow they were able to change it to 'False' without good enough reason to do so.

Again, I'm not saying Snopes is 'bad' or 'unreliable', but sometimes they just don't get all the information yet there are people who treat it as gospel.

The email is clearly false - not being from the General - and Snopes pretty much says the email contents can't be verified clearly either way due to their subjective nature...

I find it fairly accurate - at least it provides sources to track down, which anonymous and viral rumors do not.

 

[CMike]

Snopes is irrelevant.

 

[xsited1]

Are you saying that the fact that the general named denies he ever wrote that email is a "he said, she said" scenario? I don't think so - it's easily proven by producing an originol email from him.

Of course not. Did you listen to the YouTube video posted? There is not enough evidence to mark this story as 'False'. Snopes originally had it marked as 'Undetermined' but somehow they were able to change it to 'False' without good enough reason to do so.

Again, I'm not saying Snopes is 'bad' or 'unreliable', but sometimes they just don't get all the information yet there are people who treat it as gospel.

The email is clearly false - not being from the General - and Snopes pretty much says the email contents can't be verified clearly either way due to their subjective nature...

I find it fairly accurate - at least it provides sources to track down, which anonymous and viral rumors do not.

I can't say whether the email is false or not. I would even believe it if a Major General denied sending it to protect his job. However, the Snopes question is this:

Did an ABC News report deliberately slant the presidential candidate preferences expressed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq?

I don't believe there is enough information to determine this. The person on the YouTube video believes there is.

 

[Father Time]

The more skeptical among us might think that a good few of these 'rumors' about Obama actually come from his own side.... in order to discredit the opposition. Alinsky tactic. Just sayin'.

And the truly skeptical would not believe such a thing without evidence that it's true.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

If we have to argue about whether an outfit is unbiased, it's not.

Free Republic is a hardcore right wing forum. It's not even a news website, but nice try.

And Snopes IS a news website?

 

[Father Time]

If we have to argue about whether an outfit is unbiased, it's not.

Free Republic is a hardcore right wing forum. It's not even a news website, but nice try.

And Snopes IS a news website?

Actually yes they do have a daily odd news section.